What excuse have you to offer for such disregard of your father's commands?
"I cannot think there is any that will at all exonerate you from blame.
Now I bid you write at once, giving me as full and detailed a report of the past three months as you possibly can.
"My child, I love you very dearly; there is never a day, I believe never a waking hour, in which my heart does not go out in love to my darling Lulu, and send up a petition to a throne of grace on her behalf.

I think there is no sacrifice I would not willingly make for the good of any one of my dear children, and my requirements are all meant to promote their welfare and happiness in this world and the next.
"My child, my dear, dear child, your father's heart bleeds for you when he thinks what a hard battle you have to fight with the evil nature inherited from him! "But the battle must be fought, the victory won, if you would reach heaven at last.
"'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' "You have a strong will, my Lulu: make good use of it by determining that you will in spite of every hindrance, fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on eternal life; that you will win the victory over your besetting sins, and come off more than conqueror through Him that loved us.
"I can hardly hope to hear that you have not been again in sad trouble and disgrace through the indulgence of your wilful, passionate temper, and you will dislike very much to confess it all to me; you will be sorry to pain me by the story of your wrong-doing; and certainly it will give me much pain: yet I am more than willing to bear that for my dear child's sake; and as I have given you the order to tell me all, to refrain from so doing would be but a fresh act of disobedience.
"How glad I am to know that my little daughter is open and honest as the day! I repeat, write at once, a full report, to your loving father, LEVIS RAYMOND." "Oh," cried Lulu, speaking aloud in the excitement of feeling, "I do wish papa wouldn't make me confess everything to him! I think it's dreadfully hard! And what's the use when it hurts him so to hear it?
"And I'm sure it hurts me to tell it.

I'll have to, though, and I won't keep anything back, though I'm terribly afraid he'll write that I must be sent away to some boarding-school, so that Grandpa Dinsmore won't be bothered with me any more.

Oh dear! if papa could only come home, I'd rather take the hardest whipping he could give me, for though that's dreadful while it lasts, it's soon over.

But he can't come now; they wouldn't think of letting him come home again so soon; so he can't punish me in that way; and I wouldn't take it from anybody else," she added, with hotly flushing cheeks and flashing eyes; "and I don't believe he'd let anybody else do it." She turned to his letter and gave it a second reading.
"How kind and loving papa is!" she said to herself, penitent tears springing to her eyes, "It's plain he hasn't been told a word about my badness--by Grandpa Dinsmore or Mamma Vi, or anybody else.